


The Stone's Embrace

by originally



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Dwarf Culture & Customs, M/M, The Crosscut Drifters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-17
Updated: 2018-05-17
Packaged: 2019-05-03 05:14:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14561655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/originally/pseuds/originally
Summary: The Stone was pulling them to something.





	The Stone's Embrace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iodhadh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iodhadh/gifts).



Brunar settled back against the cold wall, a mug in one hand and a hunk of bread spread with the last of the cheese in the other. They would have to find a Thaig to trade at soon, or else be doomed to eat nothing but mushrooms for the next week. But they were deep, now, deep enough that the sound of excavation for the new highway no longer vibrated through their drift. The only thing he could hear was the laughter of his crew, the clink of ale mugs, and beneath it all, twisting through his veins like lyrium along a fault plane, was the Stone. The song was louder here than he had heard in weeks, its melody a constant tug behind his breastbone.

Folk back in Orzammar mocked surfacers for losing their connection to the Stone, when not one of them was willing to follow their own instincts the way Brunar’s Drifters did. Those Assembly fools might as well head out to gaze at clouds for all the good their Stone sense was doing them sitting in their chambers and sending messengers with puffed-up, toothless demands. Brunar grinned to himself as he remembered the way they had covered their tracks, hiding the entrance to the drift with crates and rocks and other debris of a large mining operation so that it would be even harder for the next of the memos to find them. It was almost a shame; he was running low on journal paper.

Though the cheese had grown a little dusty, Brunar ate it anyway, washing it down with ale. Of that, at least, they had several more barrels, carefully marshalled by the quartermaster. When the crew had traced Rogan’s latest vein to its end, they would celebrate by finishing them off. Until then, there was more work to be done.

“Look alive, boys and girls,” Brunar called, dusting the crumbs off his hands and pushing himself to his feet. “Break’s over.”

Rogan was the first back to work, as always, running his gloved hand lovingly along the hanging wall as he returned to his spot at the face. His stocky form almost vanished down in the darkness, the lines of him picked out only in the dim glow of the lyrium vein, pick glinting as he raised it to break new rock. Around Brunar, the rest of the Drifters took their places, each to their own purpose. The operation was smooth as a greased nug after so many months of practice. He took his own place, called out his orders, and trusted the Stone to guide Rogan’s arm once more. She hadn’t failed her children yet.

*

Later, when they’d downed tools for the night and the safety lamps were illuminating a circle of sleeping faces, Rogan slipped into Brunar’s bedroll. As always. He was warm as a furnace and smelled of leather and lyrium. Brunar scratched his fingers through Rogan’s thick beard, tracing the line of his jaw underneath.

“That was beautiful work today,” Brunar murmured, his voice pitched so as not to wake the others.

Rogan chuckled low in his throat. “Watching me lag gets you hot, boss?”

“I just admire your craftsmanship.”

Rogan laughed again and pressed a kiss to the corner of Brunar’s mouth, misaimed in the half-dark. Brunar tangled his fingers in Rogan’s hair, not letting him move away. Rogan parted his lips and for a long, heated moment, neither of them needed words.

When they broke apart, Brunar said, “Do you think we’re almost through this vein?”

Rogan shrugged, the movement rippling through them both. “Another day, maybe two. There’s gangue behind. Should go easy. Unless we wake a shade.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” Brunar said with a shudder. None of them liked to think about what might be lurking down here in the dark.

“Sure. Like I said, a day or two,” Rogan said. “I think we’re close to a cavern.”

“Good,” said Brunar. “This haul should see us in beer and bread for a good few months.”

“Not months,” Rogan said, and in the lamplight his eyes seemed to flicker. “Let me keep going. I’ll find us a fortune. The biggest vein you’ve ever seen.”

Brunar heard the words beneath the words, the deposit beneath the strata of Rogan’s voice. The Stone’s calling had them all transfixed by now, and the rhythm of the drifts beat its tattoo upon their bones. There was nothing above to keep them, only the pull to dig. He brushed the dirt from Rogan’s cheek with his thumb and let his other hand find the laces of Rogan’s breeches. “I know you will,” he said, and when their lips met again, Brunar tasted lyrium.

*

The darkspawn horde was a vast, undulating mass below them. Brunar’s Drifters stood in silence, watching with mounting horror as the things threw themselves at the cavern walls, wearing away the rock with nothing but their bare, scrabbling hands. They were hideous things—tainted, corpselike, _wrong_ —and their screeches echoed up through the cavern to the vent above, almost drowning out the song.

“Where are they going?” someone asked. “What’s on the other side?”

But they all knew the answer, could sense it with a sick, sinking certainly.

“That new crossroad,” Rogan said. “Named for Caradin. Close to the city. Too close.”

“What should we do?”

Rogan said nothing, only hefted a stick of explosive in his hand. When his gaze found Brunar’s, it was clear they both understood what had to be done.

“The Stone led us here for a reason,” Brunar said. He turned to survey the faces of his group, the dwarves who trusted him to lead them down into the dark. “I won’t begrudge you following the drift back up to the road. Rogan and I can lay the charges.”

“If this is the reason, she led all of us,” the quartermaster said. “Not just you.” There was a ripple of nods. “And anyway, I've got the rest of the explosives.”

They stood for a moment longer, huddled together in the mouth of the drift; if not for the sense of dread creeping down Brunar's spine, it might be any other companionable work break.

Rogan’s fingers found Brunar’s and squeezed. “She’ll take us home,” he said, and the song seemed to soar at his words.

Brunar pulled his tinderbox from his pack and smiled.


End file.
